Archive for September, 2013

In the interest of helping tourists who are new to San Francisco, as a local I thought I’d answer a few common questions.

Q: Should I go to Alcatraz/Pier 39/cable cars/Coit Tower?
A: How the hell would I know?

Q: How do I get to…
A: Well, first you pull your phone out of your pocket. Then you start the maps app, and you type in where you’re going.

Q: Where’s the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge?
A: You’re already on the Golden Gate Bridge. You just can’t see it through all the fog.

Q: Where can I park around here?
A: You can’t. Whoever told you to rent that car owes you an apology.

Q: Since bread bowls are high in carbs, why are San Franciscans so thin?
A: Fact: Nobody who lives in San Francisco has ever eaten soup in a bread bowl.

Q: What do the locals eat?
A: Typical, healthy San Franciscans eat 1 to 1.5 times their body weight per month in burritos (or as you call them, “Chi-POH-tly.”)

Q: Should I head over to Haight-Ashbury, get high, and put a flower in my hair?
A: The wind will blow the flower away. And you’ll get busted ineptly trying to buy drugs from some dumbass in Golden Gate Park. So please, go right ahead.

Q: Can you show me where my favorite episodes of Full House and Monk were filmed?
A: Yes, but first we’ll have to get in your rental car and drive down to Burbank.

Q: I saw two hairy, shirtless men in the street, wearing leather masks and whipping each other. Is there some kind of street fair going on?
A: Nope.

Did you ever see the 2007 TV series Journeyman? No? Neither did anyone else. The short-lived series is about a newspaper journalist in San Francisco who accidentally travels through time to hang out with his ex-fiancee.

And if that wasn’t strange enough, this man lives in a bay area mansion on a journalist’s salary.

The show is set in San Francisco, yet filmed mostly in San Fauxisco, a strange and magical land where it’s cheaper to film.

But audiences are stupid and require frequent reminders about a show’s setting. Rather than limit themselves to the 100 seconds of footage actually shot on location, Hollywood prefers cheap set pieces and inexpensive effects.

Here’s two examples from the very first episode. Our time-traveling hero Dan wakes up in Golden Gate Park. Which, of course, has an amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge:

If the internet has taught us anything, it’s that everyone wants listicles with animated GIFs. This is why Buzzfeed has an Alexa ranking of 221 whereas, let’s say The Atlantic, is ranked far lower at 1,868.

So why does our government keep producing longreads? Just look at the Obamacare bill; according to Wikipedia it’s 906 pages. And that’s nothing compared to all 73,954 pages of federal income tax laws. Who has time for that? We all have to pay taxes and take care of our health, but you’d need superpowers to plow through all those documents on your own.

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, a few of our first national laws were in listicle format. But somewhere along the way we got off track.

Next time you see your government representative tell them you’ve had enough of their lengthy manifestos. From now on you want simple laws you can read, preferably with lists and animated GIFs of cats falling off chairs.

Because that’s what everyone wants these days; after all it was enough to bait you into reading this post.